This course introduces students to the study of social movement and contentious politics in a comparative perspective. The first part of the course distinguishes contentious politics from the normal political process and introduces the early theories of contentious politics. The second part examines the theoretical building blocks of the field, including the political opportunity structure, mobilizing structure, and frames. We apply these conceptual toolkits to real-world examples to understand why movements emerge, how they evolve and what changes they brought about. The third and final part critically interrogates the validity of classical theories of contentious politics by focusing on recent social movements around the world. By the end of the course, students should have a good grounding in the contentious politics literature and should be able to analyse social movements from a theoretical perspective.